Congress

Levin and Alexander Say They Have Answer to Senate Gridlock: Self-Restraint

By Jonathan Miller

Senators Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., write in The Washington Post Friday that they have a plan to stop non-relevant amendments from being brought up on the Senate floor through what they describe as “self-restraint.”

Acknowledging criticism that the Senate is often described as “dysfunctional, gridlocked and broken,” they say that amendments are one of the big problems in the institution. And so, they write, “If the minority members would allow the majority leader to bring a bill to the floor for a vote without the 60-vote process, the legislation would be open to all relevant amendments but not to non-relevant amendments.”

Levin and Alexander say that last week’s debate on Postal Service reform is instructive, in that eventually, “all senators finally agreed to a lengthy list of relevant amendments offered by Republicans and Democrats alike.”

The concluded: “This approach of self-restraint will, we hope, become a good example of how the Senate can operate.”